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Product Description
When Froyln Gmez's car is found totaled by the riverbed after a hurricane, he is declared missing. Years later his wife finds piles of papers that belonged to Froyln and determines he is not dead, rather he has taken full advantage of the hurricane to run away with his lover. She then asks his friend, the author David Toscana, to sift through the papers and make sense of her husband's disappearance-the result is Tula Station. The novel is three stories in one: the story of Juan Capistrn, an orphan destined to live a quixotic life in search of adventure and heroism; the life of Froyln Gmez, a man who will forever be in love with the fantasy of a woman; and the almost true story of the town of Tula, once prosperous but in a mountain location impossible for a train to ever reach, even with the hopeful construction of Tula Station.A striking mix of old and new, Tula Station deploys the distinctive Mexican literary tradition of weaving actual places and historical events into a novel with fictional characters and multiple narrators. Intelligent and subtle, eccentric and infectious, Tula Station marks Toscana's impressive English debut.AUTHORBIO: DAVID TOSCANA lives in Monterrey, Mexico. Tula Station is his second novel. It has been translated into German, Greek and Arabic and will be published in Spain later this year. His third novel, Our Lady of the Circus, will be published later this year by St. Martin's Press.PATRICIA J. DUNCAN translates both Spanish and Italian. Most recently, she translated Pino Cacucci's biography of Tina Modotti. She lives in San Francisco, California.
Amazon.com Review
It seems fitting for a man being heralded as heir to García Márquez and other Latin American godheads of postmodern circuitousness that the namesake of David Toscana's English debut, Tula Station, is the central image and fulcrum of not only the novel but also any criticism that may be made of it. As the town of Tula's fortune ultimately resides in the government's decision of whether or not to include it on the railway line, so does the book's success depend upon the reader's willingness to separate its three narratives so that they become more than coincidental echoes of one another.
Supposedly culled by Toscana from the manuscript of Froylán Gómez, long considered dead, Tula Station continues to toy with the hazy realm between fact and fiction. Gómez is paid to write the biography of Juan Capistrán, the bastard orphan of Tula. Capistrán spends his life in pursuit of the affections of the beautiful, elusive Carmen as well as validation from the town of the once-prosperous Tula. Preoccupied with its ultimate standing in history's eyes, the town goes to great lengths to leave its mark, including this amusing attempt to be the most populous city and therefore the capital: How many more do we need? One hundred? Three hundred? And nobody can die. That is Dr. Isunza's responsibility. I, one of them said, am going right home, and in nine months, I will provide another Tulteco. All applauded and drank to expanding their families. Well, I couldn't even if I wanted to, señores, because my wife is already in menopause. Then marry off your daughters. And the men left the casino and headed home, ready to eliminate the cold showers, half acts and the not-todays. Capistrán and the town itself quickly emerge as likable underdogs, thanks to Toscana's loving attention to quirky details. Gómez, on the other hand, requires a bit more patience if one is to see something larger in the selfish rejection of his established life for the pursuit of yet another mysterious Carmen. The same can occasionally be said for the overall novel itself, cutting quickly back and forth between Gómez and Capistrán's related journeys. But what is intended as harmony can descend into a temporary cacophony for anyone who is less than patient. Toscana supplies the story's cords, but is up to the reader to elevate them to chords. --Bob Michaels
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